Stop the world - I want to get off!

Ever wondered how we're all going to respond to an increasingly hostile physical world?
What path we'll go down as we confront the dire consequences of our own collective actions?
In the face of one monumental environmental disaster the only psychological defence left for some is laughter:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – At a conference of oil leak experts in Washington today, attendees proposed plugging the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with executives of BP, the company responsible for the catastrophic spill.

"We've tried containment domes, rubber tires, and even golf balls," said William Cathermeyer of the National Oil Leakage Institute, a leading consultancy in the field of oil leaks. "Now it's time to shove some BP executives down there and hope for the best."

Submerging the oil company executives thousands of feet below the ocean's surface could be a "win-win" situation, Mr. Cathermeyer said.

"Best-case scenario, they plug the leak," he said. "And at the very least, they'll shut the fuck up."

But even as the oil leak experts proposed their unorthodox solution, environmental expert Marilyn Sufranski warned of the possible negative consequences of plugging the oil leak with BP executives.

"The Gulf of Mexico is slimy enough already," she said.

The Daily Examiner in Grafton holds its own in APN regional circulation breakdown

A general gloom still lingers over falling circulation numbers for major Australian newspapers, which this last quarter have been blamed on a slow news cycle as well as the proliferation of free online news and comment sites.
However for some regional mastheads it is slightly a different story.

The Daily Examiner on the NSW North Coast holds its own against larger newspapers within the APN group which in the week ending Saturday 22 May 2010 had a combined paid sales figure of 882,161 copies for its fourteen dailies.

The Daily Examiner which has been publishing in the Clarence Valley since 1859 came in with a daily circulation of 5,604 in 2010 year to date (YTD) terms. This showed a small percentage increase of 0.75%, which made it the only newspaper in the APN stable to be in the black for the year thus far.

Well done to the team at DEX.

The Clarence River as part of Earth's big picture

Clarence River mouth from the air at Blue Skies

From the abstract for Continental rifting and drainage reversal: The Clarence River of Eastern Australia by R. J. Haworth and C. D. Ollier, Department of Geography and Planning, The University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales 2351, Australia:

The Clarence River on Australia's east coast has an anomalous drainage pattern. Its right-bank tributaries are markedly barbed, suggesting reversal, whereas Tertiary volcanism has disrupted its left-bank drainage. The southeast-flowing Clarence is closely aligned with the northwest-flowing Condamine River just across the Continental Divide. The Condamine-Clarence alignment is continued by a large southern tributary, the Orara River, which flows northwest, away from the sea, to meet the southeast-flowing Clarence. A broad river with a quite different character flows east from near the Orara-Clarence junction to the sea. This is essentially an overflow channel.
This series of aligned streams, the Condamine-Clarence-Orara, represents the remains of an earlier northwest-flowing stream that extended the full length of the Clarence-Moreton Basin, an eastern extension of the Great Artesian Basin. During the Jurassic, the Clarence-Moreton Basin was filled with sediments from the surrounding highlands, including those to the east of the present coastline. Continental rifting from Late Cretaceous times onwards led to the opening of the Tasman Sea, causing the reversal and beheading of the original northwest-flowing streams and the formation of the Great Escarpment.
The evolution of the Clarence River does not fit into most conventional geomorphic paradigms such as cycles, climatic geomorphology or steady-state landforms. It is the result of a succession of unique events on a very long timescale, and as such is a classic example of evolutionary geomorphology.

Water spouts on the NSW North Coast

Local photographer Steve Young manged to catch these two water spouts and the Coffs Coast Advocate reported last Friday:
"Coffs Harbour Bureau of Meteorology duty observer Roger Brown said water spouts were uncommon here but not rare.
“They usually form in a thunderstorm,” Mr Brown said. “It is a type of tornado, although they are usually much less potent than the ones we see in the mid-west of the US. We probably see a couple every year – when they’re forming you often see a couple at a time.”

Here's another pic from Port Macquarie on the mid-North Coast in 2007, found at Flickr's 'australia waterspout' tag:


Pics by Steve Young and beachcomberaustralia

Colourful National Party character will be back on the road again

(with apologies to Willie Nelson)

District Court Judge James Black has changed a sentence for drink-driving handed down early this year to Nationals stalwart Murray Lees.

Lismore's Northern Star reports:

Judge Black yesterday set aside Murray Lees’ eight-month suspended prison sentence, handed down by Magistrate Michael Dakin at Murwillumbah Local Court in January for Lees’ fourth drink-driving offence in five years.

Mr Dakin had also banned Lees, 44, of Dulguigan, north of Murwillumbah, from driving for three years.

Lees, who ran the Nationals’ Page campaign in 2007, stepped down from his leadership positions within the party while he dealt with issues around depression and drinking.

Yesterday’s decision will let Lees get back behind the wheel on September 17 – a year after he blew 0.085 after being stopped by police while racing to get to his brother-in-law, who had just been in a bad traffic accident.

Judge Black allowed Lees to enter the interlock program, which would allow him to drive so long as he fitted a device to his car that forced him to pass a breathalyser test before starting the engine. He won’t be allowed to drive without the device for two years from September 17.

The court heard Lees had been celebrating his birthday and was waiting with his wife for a taxi to go out to dinner when the couple got a call from Mrs Lees’ brother, who had just been in a traffic accident.

The couple jumped in the family car, with Lees behind the wheel, and drove off to help, but ended up being stopped by police.

Sources: The Northern Star and absolutelyrics.com

What goes on behind closed doors should stay there, says Daily Examiner editor

A bouquet for The Daily Examiner editor David Bancroft's Page 10 comment on 26 May 2010:

IN the past week we have seen some parts of the media lurch dangerously towards titillation over substance, highlighted by the "outing" and subsequent resignation of the former transport minister, David Campbell.

Throughout our history, Australians and the Australian media have shied away from intruding into the private lives of politicians, but the treatment of Campbell and, earlier, John Della Bosca suggests the old rules no longer apply.

Della Bosca was forced to resign after the media revealed an affair with a younger woman, and Campbell last week handed in his resignation after Channel Seven secretly filmed him entering a gay night club.

It appears, in Campbell's case in particular, that he was set up.

Despite suggestions in Channel Seven's early report that Campbell had misused his ministerial car he, in fact, committed no crime and no breach of ministerial guidelines.

This was not news.

Channel Seven had no right to first pry and later report what Campbell did in his private life.

Being homosexual is not an offence and did not prevent him from carrying out his ministerial or electorate duties.

It should be a matter for Campbell, his wife of 30 years and his children.

To air his personal life on national television only serves to further erode public confidence in the media.

What politicians do behind closed doors should stay there unless it impacts on their duties or conflicts with moral statements they have made.

I, for one, certainly don't want to know what people like Wilson Tuckey get up to in their bedrooms and I think most Australians would feel the same.

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill 2010: when 'we told you so' is hopelessly futile and any penalties imposed on polluters not enough to satisfy

The U.S. Public Broadcasting Service is running a meter calculating the amount of oil now devasting the marine environment, sea creatures both large and small, bird life, foreshore and estuary ecosystems for hundreds of miles along the Gulf of Mexico thanks to British Petroleum and partners.




PBS 'The BP Spill's Impact on Wildlife'
Watch
Listen
Transcript
WARNING: Some images are distressing

UPDATE on 30 May 2010:
There is some talk that BP executives are pressuring the mainstram media and organizations involved in the oil spill clean-up not to give regular accounts of numbers of wildlife killed or rescued and not to give a daily reckoning of the amount of oil still leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
The fact that PBS paused its meter (above) on 28 May 2010 seems to lend credence to this claim.

Don't do it Swanee! Don't water down the RSPT

Here I was thinking that at last the big bloated mining companies operating in Oz might finally be made to pay a realistic tax on the huge profits they make out of a very finite resource.
Even in the middle of the global financial crisis they were all doing nicely thank you.
I switch on the radio today and find that Swan and Bowen are being tipped to back down and give in to the dishonest media campaign those same big miners are running.
Don't do it fellas - those Aussies battling their way towards retirement and facing less and less in the way of social infrastructure to help in old age are standing squarely behind this tax rearrangement.
Swanee - forget the meeja, ignore the polls, remember the people!

How some of that filthy lucre's adding up:
17 May 2010 Leighton announces third quarter profit of $400m and $37.5bn of work in hand....These are strong results for the nine months which reflect solid performances in mining and infrastructure
26 Feb 2010 ... Perilya announces net profit after tax of $28.5 million in six latest month report.
Rio Tinto's net profit after tax came to $5.43 billion in 2009
Fortescue Metals Group reported net profit after tax for the 12 months to June 30, 2009 of $626.13 million
30 June 2009 On an underlying basis, Centennial returned a record $82.0 million after-tax result.
9 September 2009 Hillgrove Resources Limited (ASX: HGO) is pleased to announce a net profit after tax (NPAT) for the six months ended 31 July 2009 of $53,973,885 (2008 6 months: $2,208,242 loss) after tax expense of $27,170,778
Industrea have announced an adjusted net profit after tax (NPAT) of $41.3 million for the 12 months to 30 June 2008, up 122% from the previous year's result
2008 Alumina Limited's net profit after tax for 2008 was $168 million...AWAC's 2008 net profit after tax was US$592 million compared to US$953 million in 2007
ERA's net profit after tax for the full year ended 31 December 2008 was a record $221.8 million, compared with $76.1 million for the same period in 2007. Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) were $318.0 million (2007: $108.0 million)

Australian Federal Election 2010: Bowen does Hartsuyker on superannuation

Australian Federal Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law and Minister for Human Services Chris Bowen, speaking of NSW Nationals MP for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker, according to Hansard on 24 May 2010 courtesy of OpenAustralia:

One month ago the shadow minister for superannuation—and, yes, there is one; it is the member for Cowper—gave a speech to the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees.

It was a scripted, written speech.

As far as we know the member for Cowper might have even rehearsed in front of the mirror, so we should have been able to take what he said as the gospel truth.

He said that the opposition in government would allow people over 50 to make concessional top-ups to their superannuation payments.

That was a commitment from the shadow minister for superannuation.
It lasted one month.
On 19 April this was announced as policy by the shadow minister for superannuation.
On 19 May, the shadow minister for finance announced this was no longer opposition policy; it had been discontinued.
It lasted a month. Their commitment to people aged over 50 lasted a month.
How inconsistent can you be?
But the Leader of the Opposition is probably very pleased with this. He is probably pleased with the inconsistency.

We're all in trouble when the Australian coal industry lobby begins an advertisemnt with this graphic

A NewGenCoal online advertising link to its website on 24 May 2010

Not everyone stays on a webpage for the complete advertising slideshow and so might not be aware that the people at NewGenCoal are actually referring to climate change denialism in this graphic - not their own stated position on global warming.

Still, this image does feed the prejudice of some in the Australian energy sector.......